


The Haunting's Not The House

by mothermachinegun



Category: South Park
Genre: Eventual Ship, First Apartment, M/M, Paranormal, Psychological Horror, and other NSFW things, haunted house au, mature for language
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-05
Updated: 2017-12-20
Packaged: 2019-01-29 23:57:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 18,741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12641913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mothermachinegun/pseuds/mothermachinegun
Summary: “All right. This is where we're living for the next whole year.” Craig stated it like Tweek didn't already know, he did know, but somehow, the way he said it made it seem so much scarier. This would be their first year away from their parents, and they felt- ...at least HE felt terrified about the whole ordeal. [Updates on Wednesdays]





	1. Thursday (Week 1)

**Author's Note:**

> welcome.

“Bet there's a dozen places you could hide a body in here.” 

“That's sick, Craig.” 

He had a point though, Tweek had to admit. It did look like a good place to hide a body. Good place to get murdered in your sleep, too, if you were really feeling the creepy. Why had they agreed to live here again? 

There was a long pause. 

“I can't believe how big it is.” 

Right again. It was huge. It was three fucking stories huge. It was huge and it was less than $500 a month to rent half of it. Well- nearly half of it. The rest of it, Tweek assumed, was being rented out by someone else. There was a car in the driveway that didn't belong to them. Ruddy orange Mustang that Tweek only knew was a Mustang because there was a horse on it. It sat in the 'parking lot' behind the house that was really just a wrap-around driveway that had been covered in gravel to maximize parking space. 

It had once been a grand house, it had to have been. It had a wooden porch and more windows than Tweek could count. A sheet draped over the inside of a couple. No curtains, apparently, but their housemate either wanted privacy or to block out the sunlight. Creepy. 

Again, why had they agreed to live here? 

Because, he reminded himself, it was affordable, and it was all they were going to be able to afford while Craig was going to school. 

Him? No way. Tweek could hardly handle high school, college was certainly not in the forecast. 

Craig, on the other hand... he was going to work for NASA. He was good enough for that. 

It occurred to him that he'd forgotten to reply. “...yeah,” He said quietly, too late. Craig had started up the gravel drive towards the porch and it took Tweek a second to realize. “Gah! Wait up!” He jogged a couple steps to catch up. 

The paint on the porch was eggshell and so thick that it shone. Layers upon layers of it where landlords had just painted it over and over again. Trying to spruce it up every year for renters. A new coat of paint on the whole place. New-used appliances. Gas stove. No air conditioning. Paradise. 

“All right. This is where we're living for the next whole year.” Craig stated it like Tweek didn't already know, he did know, but somehow, the way he said it made it seem so much scarier. This would be their first year away from their parents, and they felt- ...at least he felt terrified about the whole ordeal. 

That was really why he and Craig had decided to move in together. Tweek would never say anything to him about it but he was petrified to live on his own. Not because he was afraid of the darkness or the loneliness or the things that went potentially bump in the night, but it was because he was afraid of not being able to make it on his own. There was so much to remember about being an adult. Bills- job- social life (hah, what?). He needed someone else, someone like Craig, to help him keep his shit together. 

It helped that everyone their age moved in together now. It was only the smart thing to do when you were young and didn't know anything about anything. Or have any fucking money.

“Great!” Tweek replied a little more jerkily than he meant to, catching the screen door when Craig opened it and ducking into the building after him. To his surprise the front door opened up into a stairwell. There was black and white checkered tile on this floor (fucking hideous) and wooden steps that disappeared up to a second. That was where they were going to be staying. Apartment 2. 

His eyes flitted back and forth across this foyer, shifting his backpack on his shoulders and starting to look up nervously at the staircase. “...wh-where does the other guy come in?” 

“There's a second door around the house,” Craig said, starting up the stairs whilst jingling a handful of keys. “I think this is our door.” 

“Geez! Our own door, wow!” There was plenty of sarcasm in Tweek's voice, he made sure of it. Craig scoffed, but Tweek knew he didn't mean anything by the noise. That was just a noise Craig made. He wasn't exactly Mr. Expressive- he was flat, frank, and what had started as an unusually deep voice in his childhood had sunk even further into his early adulthood. Tweek's hadn't. In fact, sometimes his voice still cracked like he was 12 and going through puberty again. 

At the top of the stairs was a landing, and yet another door. Craig seemed to have found the key he was looking for and stuck it into the lock. The doorknob was shinier and far newer than the door itself. Thank god for deadbolts because the immediate thing Tweek noticed once the door swung open was the shitty little latch on the inside of it, that crappy hook that fit into an eye screwed into the doorframe. Like that would keep anyone out. Jesus Christ. 

“It's not THAT bad,” Craig stopped in the kitchen, hands in his pockets as he looked around the room. Tweek did the same. New-used appliances, just like he expected. “It has to be livable, otherwise they wouldn't be able to even rent it out. Everything works.” 

There was no dishwasher, Tweek noticed. It was a little early to be pining for the comforts of home though, wasn't it? 

“Yeah...” Tweek forced himself to agree, pacing around Craig towards the only doorway out of the room. This turned out to open into a hallway, with four doors at one end and the living room at the other. Or what he assumed was the living room, anyway. It was just... a big room, with lots of windows that faced the front yard. “We need some furniture, dude.” 

“You're telling me,” Craig replied from the kitchen. Tweek could hear him opening and closing cupboard doors as he poked around. “We can find some cheap furniture easy enough, I'm more concerned with moving it.” 

“Think Clyde would lend us his truck?” Tweek had moved along the hallway, one hand out as he sought the light switch. He felt something beneath his fingers and flipped it- nothing happened, and Tweek thought for a horrible second that the power was out. And then he realized that there was simply no ceiling light in the hallway. “...Uh, Craig, there's no lights in here!” 

“What the hell?” Craig joined him there in the hallway a second later, squinting up at the spackled ceiling before looking at the light switch. Tweek flipped it back and forth a couple of times to show him. “Oh. We need to plug in a lamp.” 

“That's stupid.” At least the natural light from the windows was enough to allow Tweek to navigate to the end of the hall. He made his way down to the farthest right hand door and pushed; it swung open with a creak so ominous that he could have chastised it for being stereotypical. Straight out of a horror movie. 

He'd opened the door into the bathroom. He had to take a deep breath to keep his skin from crawling. The porcelain was old. The sink was a free standing unit with no counter top and the toilet had an awkward spot behind the door. The bathtub- and that was all there was, no shower, just a big, claw footed bathtub in the same eggshell color as the house outside. Perhaps the most unsettling thing of all was the ceiling. It was dramatically slanted, the roof sloping across the bathtub and cornering it in a claustrophobic little space with about three feet of head room. 

“Sweet,” Craig poked his head around the corner. “That's a big ass tub.” 

Maybe it wasn't THAT bad. If Craig thought it was okay, he was clearly overreacting. 

“Yeah, dude. Some of this stuff is really old!” Tweek tried not to look at the color of the grout between the tiled wall. Who could get clean in this place? 

Craig flipped the lights, which cast the room yellow and made Tweek squint. He could see them both in the tiny medicine cabinet mirror, Craig's dark hair just barely poking out from beneath his hat and Tweek's terrible attempt to tame his with a headband. He didn't always wear it like that. Sometimes it was easier that way to keep it out of his face, especially if he was going to be sweating. They made eye contact for a second before Tweek got uncomfortable and pulled away. “Which room do you want?” 

“Doesn't matter to me.” Craig stayed in the bathroom while Tweek moved between the other three rooms. One of them was a linen closet which contained nothing but the faint smell of moth balls, and two bedrooms. One of them had the same sloped ceiling as the bathroom but it wasn't nearly as dramatic. This one just looked crooked. 

Tweek wondered if it really DID matter to him, and tried not to fret about it too much. Craig was a nice guy, he could just be saying that to make Tweek feel better about picking his room first. Dammit. 

“Uh- uhh,” He moved to the other room again. Craig remained in the bathroom doorway, watching him. “I-I don't know, Craig, you pick.” 

“I said it doesn't matter, dude.” 

“Gghhh! Too much pressure,” Tweek found himself in the sloped bedroom again. It was painted a pale gray color that he kind of liked. Even if the slanted ceiling was kind of disorienting. “...Nnnghhh... o-okay, this one.” And as though to seal the deal he dropped his backpack down onto the floor. 

“Cool. Wasn't so hard, right?” 

“I guess not...” 

“Come on,” Craig ducked out from the bathroom and started down the hall. “We have a lot of shit to carry up. Might as well get started.” 

And so Tweek went with him back down the stairs. He was starting to really regret agreeing to a second floor apartment- this was going to KILL his back...

 

By the time the sun had begun to sink over the mountains, Tweek was exhausted and more than ready to call it a night. Boxes of crap were pushed into every single corner of each room without an ounce of furniture to go alongside it. They had to get Clyde's help, they had agreed, they at least had to get their beds back from their parents' houses. Plus Craig was kind of hoping his dad would let him have the old couch. 

Tweek was sitting cross-legged on the floor in his new bedroom, fidgeting with his fingers aimlessly as he waited for the air mattress to inflate. The whirring of the portable pump was the only thing he could hear. Craig running water and brushing his teeth in the other room. 

The bedrooms didn't have ceiling lights in them either, as it had turned out. The only rooms that did were the kitchen and bathroom. Everything else needed a fucking lamp plugged in. And as it were, Tweek had a desk lamp sitting on the floor in his room and he left the door open to let some of the light from the bathroom filter in. 

Didn't have any food in the house so they'd run to Burger King for dinner- it was the closest thing into town which blew because Tweek heartily disliked BK. They weren't exactly smack-dab in the city so their options were few unless they wanted to drive at least 10 minutes. Which they didn't, considering Craig didn't know the city very well. It was much bigger here than South Park. 

There weren't a lot of street lights outside, Tweek noticed (much to his personal distress). There was one across the street with the next one being almost entirely down the block. The light it produced was yellow and the shadows it cast were long. He found his eyes training on the tall, black squares for longer than he would have normally done so but he felt himself starting to disassociate and whoops there he'd gone. 

No longer able to hear the air mattress pump beyond a whisper of static in the background, he kept his eyes fixed unblinkingly on the window. If he let them unfocus he could see the yellow rectangle of light that was his doorway, and the shadows that the boxes of his stuff were casting onto the gray walls. Long shadows. 

A black figure suddenly blocked the doorway behind him. The light disappeared. Tweek let out a startled noise and flinched back to reality, his heart suddenly pounding in his throat. He whipped round with wide eyes and- oh it was Craig. In his pajamas.

“Jesus,” He put both hands up disarmingly. “Sorry dude. I thought you heard me the first time.” 

“What?” Tweek could still feel the choking slam of his heartbeat against his trachea even as he fumbled to turn the stupid air pump off. His mattress was fully inflated by now anyway and he might have even popped it if he'd left it on for much longer. Would have been his luck. “No, god, I couldn't hear anything over that thing- what did you say?” 

“I said,” Craig started over, “That Clyde finally texted me back, and he can meet us on Tuesday so we can get more stuff.” 

“Ah- uh- when? What time?” Tweek's mind raced. Did he have to do anything Tuesday? Had he forgotten something? He was supposed to do something next week- oh, right. He was supposed to be going to talk to his dad's coffee buddy about a job at the plant. The Harbucks distribution plant. 

Tweek was better behind the scenes of the coffee business. And yeah, he was fucking going into the business, because it was all he knew and that was probably safest since he would probably fail at trying something new. He had worked among customers for long enough to want to not work among customers any more. He didn't have the patience for their bullshit and it had waned significantly as he'd gotten older. 

It wasn't what he wanted to do for a living, necessarily, but it would pay the bills for now. Factory jobs paid well even if the work usually sucked. 

“Sometime in the afternoon.” 

“Okay... that's fine. That works.” 

Craig flashed him a thumbs up and wordlessly went back into the bathroom. Tweek tried to busy himself by putting bedding on his air mattress and tried not to look out the window. Maybe he got why the dude downstairs put sheets up over his windows... 

“Craig?” He called, stuffing a pillow into it's case. “Can we get groceries tomorrow? I don't have any coffee...” 

“Yeah, definitely,” Came the reply, and then once more Craig was in his doorway with a towel around his neck. “We need some stuff. Like toilet paper.” 

“Oh Jesus.” 

“Yyyyep. Hope you don't have to shit.” 

Tweek cracked a smile because he just had to, because that was typical Craig. They might have been 18 years old and practically adults but fuck if that same old shit wasn't still funny (it was.) They'd been making each other laugh since 3rd grade. As if time could change that. 

It was gonna be good to be living with Craig. It was going to be really good. Tweek felt the smile stuck to his face a little bit longer because- hell, maybe the apartment wasn't perfect, but at least Craig was there to share it with him.


	2. Sunday (Week 1)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is a microchapter.

What was it about old houses that made them so damn loud? 

The floor creaked with every step he and Craig made. The stove clicked and made the occasional funny rattling sound. The refrigerator hummed. There was always noise. Tweek was used to other noises though. The sound of the television where his mother and father would be watching downstairs. The occasional gurgling of the coffee pot. 

His mom had given them an individual cup coffee maker which he didn't understand at first. If you were going to make coffee you made a pot of it, not one cup at a time. Craig had liked the idea of it because of the other stuff you could make with it- the pods with stuff like tea or hot cocoa mix in them. 

It was shocking what stupid shit you got excited about when you got older. 

After spending two nights in the house Tweek found himself starting to rely on the particular hiss that the new coffee maker made when it brewed. It reminded him to exhale. 

It was the sound that made him look up from where he was shoving a thumb tack into his wall- which he then dropped (“Gah!”) and oh Jesus where did it go fuck he was going to step on it or Craig was going to step on it- oh there it was. 

He finished pinning the sheet up over the first window. Fuck why had he picked the room with the most windows?

Stepping awkwardly over his air mattress Tweek moved silently down the hallway towards the kitchen. His feet were silent anyway, the floorboards beneath them sure weren't. It was like the whole house was sighing under just the slightest provocation. 

It smelled like coffee in the dimly lit kitchen, which was nice. It reminded him of home or as much like home as he could muster while being a thirty minute car ride away from South Park. 

He could hear music playing softly in Craig's room, the door of which was ajar. They hadn't really done much door shutting in the past couple of days. It wasn't like they needed to. It was kind of like they were always in the same room, in a way, just separated by walls. 

Taking the mug of black coffee back to his bedroom with him he eyed Craig's open door as he drew close to his own. His room was kiddy-corner with the bathroom being across from Craig's and the linen closet across from Tweek's. Would have been cool if the bedrooms were either next door or across from one another, but they could only ask for so much in their little slice of paradise. 

He set the mug carefully down on the floor since he didn't have a surface to set it on (yet). Picked up another blanket from the box on the floor and started pinning it up over the second window. 

The neighborhood looked surprisingly gray outside despite the temperature. It was nearing the end of August and it was still warm. Hopefully they would be able to stay warm this winter... hopefully the heat even worked here. 

The sound of floorboards creaking got Tweek's attention and he paused to turn and look at the doorway. Just in time for Craig to appear in it. 

“Sup dude?” Tweek tried to sound nonchalant but he knew what Craig was going to say. Sinking into a seated position on the edge of his air mattress he took up his coffee mug and tried to look anywhere but at Craig. 

“Nothing. Just thought I'd see how your unpacking was going.” Craig was looking at the windows. Tweek didn't have to look at him to know that he was. “Are we becoming a creature of the night?” There it was. Fucker. 

“The street lights are bright at night,” He said quickly, his tone far more defensive than he meant it to be. “It's keeping me up.” He looked at Craig with his expression hard, silently daring him to bring up the fact that they were the dimmest goddamn streetlights in the world. 

Surprisingly Craig just looked out one of the uncovered windows for a minute. “You have a better view than me,” He murmured, “I just get to look out at the back parking lot.” 

“Trade you,” Tweek half hoped he'd agree. 

“Nah. All my stuff is already in there.” Craig casually hitched up his pants and kept looking out the window. “Why don't you just get curtains?” 

“Curtains are expensive, Craig! They're like forty bucks on Amazon and they wouldn't even be big enough for these!” They were tall windows, come on now. 

“Okay that's fair.” 

“Just leave me and my sheet curtains alone, man.” Tweek flashed him a little smile and took a drink of coffee. Craig returned it before he turned around and silently started pinning another blanket up over the third window. Tweek bit the inside of his lip. “You don't have to do that.” 

“If it'll help you sleep, Tweek.” Fuck him for being so nice! 

“Ggh... Who said I was having trouble sleeping?” 

“You did, like, two minutes ago.” 

Oh fuck that's right. Tweek wondered if committing ritual suicide would be an inappropriate response to the situation. 

He felt eyes on him and looked up and there were Craig's, looking down at him on his spot on the corner of the mattress with his arms above his head as he felt for a spot to pin the sheet. “You even look like you haven't slept.” 

Tweek ran a hand through his hair. “Uh, no, it's okay dude, it's just- getting used to a new place, you know? I never sleep good in new places, you know that.” 

“Got any weed left?” 

“No.” 

“Hmm...” Craig had his thinking voice on. Tweek recognized it. “You could always sleep in my room if you think it would help.” 

He felt weight sink onto the mattress next to him and jostled lightly into Craig's elbow. Ashamed as he was to think about it he knew in the back of his mind that sleeping in the same room as Craig would help a whole fucking lot, probably. 

“You know I wouldn't mind.” 

“...goddammit Craig I'm gonna need you to stop reading me like a freakin' book all the time.” 

Craig smiled. “What are best friends for?”


	3. Sunday Night

They couldn't sleep in the same room forever. Tweek knew that. He was rationalizing it to himself over and over again in his head that it would be cool and that after a couple days of sleeping in Craig's room he would get used to the sounds that the house made at night and then be able to sleep in his own room. 

Right. 

That was the plan, anyway. Tweek had some practice in predicting his own moods and behaviors and he was hoping to give himself to benefit of the doubt this time. He was just going to have to be an adult about it and force himself out of Craig's room after they got their beds. 

He hadn't bathed since Thursday morning and it was getting to the point where he couldn't put it off any more. Tweek did not like the bathroom. It was too small, too weirdly shaped. Like it hadn't meant to be a bathroom in the first place but someone had gutted a closet and put a tub in it. Then realized they didn't leave room for the toilet or the sink. 

Craig had no problem using the tub. He was actually pretty stoked to see that he could fit in it without having his feet up on the edge or having his knees up out of the water. Craig had issues like that. He was a tall guy. Tall and slender like a shadow. 

Steam billowed up from the tub as Tweek stared at himself in the medicine cabinet mirror. His hair was so greasy it was a wonder you couldn't deep fry something in it. Ugh. How had he gone this long? How did he let it get this bad? 

At least he washed his face and brushed his teeth and scrubbed a washcloth under his armpits every night. It at least made him feel like he didn't smell bad, or that he wouldn't break out. God forbid Craig think any less of him for his hygiene neuroses but the bathtub just freaked him the fuck out. 

It's just a fucking bathtub, he told himself, slowly unbuttoning the front of his shirt with trembling hands. It's just a crappy old tub that's stained with who knows what and a sucking black hole for a drain. 

Taking deep breaths to try and regulate his quickening heartbeat Tweek made sure all of his essentials were within reach. Shampoo, body wash, face wash, washcloth. Check. Towel. Yep. Okay.

Okay. Time to wash. 

...any second now. 

...and go. 

Fuck. 

Tweek closed his eyes and pulled his boxers the rest of the way down and made the cold two-step to the tub, which he had to climb into instead of just stepping over a ledge. Fuck this thing was deep. And he probably didn't need to put this much water in it. 

He quickly tucked his legs beneath him so that his feet were as far away from the drain as possible and then took a breath, pinched his nose, and shoved his head under the water. 

Fuck. Bathtubs. 

Why did nobody put a fucking shower in this place? 

He resurfaced and, dripping, leaned over the edge of the tub to grab his shampoo. He could probably beat the speed record for hair washing if he set his mind to it, but then he would also probably give himself a panic attack, and that would be super awkward for Craig to deal with since he was in the bathtub. 

He adjusted his legs in the water. One of his toenails grazed the porcelain in such a way that it made his stomach clench, a volatile, disgusting feeling like scraping nails on a chalkboard. 

Scrubscrubscrub getout getout getout.

Under the water he went again, hands digging at his scalp and wringing the blond locks between his fingers. Loosening the grime and suds along with it and willing the squicky feelings to go too. 

He kept his eyes firmly closed the whole time until he had to wipe water from them, pushing a pile of hair back from his forehead and reaching over the edge for his body wash. He closed his eyes again as he washed himself, not looking at the tub or into the water and just focusing on systematically washing each part of his body as fast as he could. Neck, shoulders, chest, sides, stomach, back, pelvis, buns, junk, thighs, calves, feet. Yep, he was all still there, nothing had yet slipped into the drain. 

Hurried rinse. And then finally back over the side of the tub for his face wash. 

In his earlier teens Tweek suffered from stress acne and the charcoal scrub that his friend Butters had recommended did the job keeping his skin clear. It foamed a rich black between his hands and he pressed them to his face, working the product in circles until he felt he'd been scrubbed raw enough. He cupped water in both hands and lifted it into his face to rinse, and only after doing that a couple of times did he open his eyes. 

The water was turning black. 

Not just the grayish color that the charcoal sometimes tinted it, but black.

“Jesus,” Tweek barely heard his own voice, a raspy whimper in the back of his throat as his skin crawled. Something- black- liquid- like ink- was trickling up from the drain (the plug was gone?!) and there was only that hole, those little black tendrils that reached up from it's belly and it drew closer and closer to him in the water until it started to engulf him, and in blind panic he threw himself out of the tub. 

He smacked his elbow on the edge of the sink and yelped, scrambling for his towel and trying to desperately scrub at himself. No, no, God, he was covered in it, the black whatever-the-fuck it was-

A knock on the door. “Tweek? You okay?” 

“GAH!” Tweek's whole body seized before he whipped round to stare at the door. “I'm fine! Oh, Jesus-” 

The water in the tub was clear. 

Tweek looked down at himself. He was clean. Not a spot of black on him.

...Jesus, what the fuck?

Maybe it was time to talk to the doctor again. If he was hallucinating then something was fucking up somewhere. Maybe his meds were starting to react negatively to one another. Something had always been off in that screwy little head of his.

It was probably just his imagination, which had always been overactive, but fuck, that was almost a little too real. This house really was freaking him out.

There was water fucking... everywhere. All over the floor. God dammit. 

“Are you sure?” 

Tweek looked at his face in the mirror- red, from the heat or from panicked crying? 

He threw his dry clothes onto the floor, hoping they'd absorb some of the water. 

“Yeah, Craig, I'm good,” His voice cracked when he said 'good'. It was wholly unconvincing. Holy fuck, get a hold of yourself, man. 

Trying to ignore the quivering feeling in his limbs Tweek wrapped the towel around his waist, secured it with a fist, and opened the door. 

Craig looked at him, his face completely expressionless even if Tweek was wearing nothing but a towel and a freaked-out look. 

“Dude, what-” 

“I slipped, okay?” Tweek blurted the words before he could stop himself. “I slipped and I hit my elbow,” Which, thinking about it, was throbbing. That was gonna bruise. “I'm good, swear. Don't worry about me.” 

“Oh, shit,” Now Craig's voice took on an edge of concern and he craned his head to one side as though trying to look at Tweek's elbow. He was looking at the wrong one though, bless him. “Put a bag of frozen peas on it.” 

“We don't have frozen peas,” Tweek reminded him, adjusting his towel a little. “We got frozen corn.” He paused. Craig was still standing in the doorway about five inches from him. Too close. “...can you move?” 

“Right,” Craig stepped neatly out of his way and Tweek made a beeline for his bedroom (which now had all of the windows covered). He closed the door almost all of the way and changed into his pajamas behind it so Craig didn't accidentally see him if he walked by. 

It took Tweek a second to notice something in his room was missing. “Hey Craig did you move my bed?” 

“Yeah,” Came the reply from the other room, “Figured that was cool.” 

It was, but Tweek didn't say anything. He towel dried his hair and ran a comb through it but that was it, didn't bother with anything beyond that because how could you deal with cowlicks and weird growth patterns? It didn't matter what his hair looked like when it was wet or dry, it was going to be the same messy shit until the day he died. 

He tried not to think about the bathtub. About little black tendrils. He just threw his towel over the corner of his door since there wasn't anywhere else to hang it and went to sit in Craig's room with him. 

Immediately he felt better. Just being in the room that somehow already smelled like Craig was comforting. It was all the same stuff from Craig's room at home, the same space posters and books and the stuffed guinea pig that Tweek had gotten him as a joke one Valentine's day when they were both single. 

Craig was on his stomach on his own air mattress, looking at his phone. Probably wasting data. They really needed WiFi. He looked up when Tweek entered the room and watched in silence as he settled down on the mattress beside Craig's. Tweek rolled over and laid with his back facing him. 

“So what's on your agenda for this week?” 

Tweek made a noise. “I'm supposed to go meet that friend of my dad's about the job. Wish me luck dude, I'm going to need it. I hope I don't make an ass of myself.” 

“You won't make an ass of yourself.” Craig reached over and patted him on the shoulder in a way that was both encouraging and patronizing. “You'll do great Tweek. Just relax and be yourself.” 

It was so fucking easy for him to say that and be 100% sincere. It almost annoyed Tweek how much he meant it. 

“Easier said than done...” 

Craig rolled halfway off of the mattress to plug in his phone. Tweek could hear the little 'boop!' as it began to charge. For a minute they didn't say anything and just lay there in the dim. 

“...kinda shitty that there aren't any lights...” Tweek was pretty sure he'd mentioned this before though. 

“The things you take for granted when you're away from home.” Craig rolled over onto his back. Tweek could picture him laying there: feet crossed at the ankles, exposed a couple of inches because his pajama pants were too short. Arms folded behind his head. Eyes open.

“I was just thinking about that...” Tweek replied softly, “How much I was missing having a shower.” 

“We can always get one of the hose ones you screw onto the faucet.” 

“Goddamn Craig. You're so smart.” 

Craig chuckled. He had a great laugh, deep and throaty and goddamn if he didn't snort just a little tiny bit when he got to going really hard. 

“Yeah I know,” He agreed, and at last Tweek rolled over to look at him with a little smile of his own. “What would you do without me?” 

“Still be living in South Park man.” Tweek's eyelids felt surprisingly heavy. He hadn't rested them in forever it felt, his nights full of tossing and turning and unfamiliar noises. But now that he could hear something consistent like Craig's breathing... maybe he could count those until he fell asleep. 

“Don't be dumb dude. You ready for me to turn the light out?” 

No. “Yeah.” 

A click, and then darkness. And it was darker in Craig's bedroom than it was in his own, with no streetlamps to light the area and no house behind them. 

“Jesus your room is dark.” 

“I can turn the lamp back on.” 

“No it's good dude. Maybe the dark will help me sleep.” It wouldn't. His room was too bright and the windows too big, Craig's room was too dark... he just couldn't win. 

Tweek shut his eyes and started breathing. In for five seconds, out for five seconds. Breathe deep into your tummy and not in your chest. Listen to Craig. He's right there. You'll be fine. 

He didn't know how long he was going to lay there before he would eventually drift off. He left his phone in the other room on the charger and Craig didn't have a clock in here. It could have been an hour. Could have been fifteen minutes. 

He lost track of how many times he'd counted Craig inhale before he heard him start to gently snore. It wasn't loud. Tweek welcomed it as white noise and starting counting snores instead. 

Got to 32 before he fell asleep.


	4. Tuesday

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> clyde's here

 

“Holy shit, nice digs!” Was the first thing Clyde said when he saw the place, stepping back with his hands on his hips. “You guys got yourself a real Amityville Horror house.”

“It doesn't look anything like the Amityville house, dumbass.” Craig waited until Tweek was out of the car before he popped the trunk. “It's just an old ass house they split up into apartments. It was like a mansion or some shit.”

“Does someone else live here?”

“Yeah,” Craig waved a hand at the ruddy Mustang, which was in it's usual spot behind the house.

Clyde scratched the scruff on his chin as he eyeballed the car. "Huh. Sweet Mustang." He turned back towards his truck and started to undo the winch straps that were holding shit in place. "So where are we taking this shit?”

“Front door.” Craig lead the way up the wooden steps onto the porch, Tweek bringing up the rear in Clyde's shadow.

Clyde was a big dude. He was the second fattest kid in their elementary school and then hockey happened.

He was still second fattest guy they knew but he also built lots of muscle around the fat everywhere so he could toss anybody who called him fat. So nobody called him fat any more.

“You've got to be fucking kidding me,” Clyde drawled in despair as he caught sight of the stairs. “You're up _there?_ ”

“Yep. Pretty sweet, huh?”

“Fuck's sake,” Clyde sighed. “Mmkay, Craig, let's do this shit. It's you and me, man. Tweek if you could like... get the door.”

“Yeah!” Tweek was more than happy to not have to lift furniture and stay out of the way. Craig looked less than thrilled but followed Clyde back out, and Tweek started up the stairs to unlock and open their front door.

In the back of Clyde's pickup they'd loaded two mattresses, two disassembled bedframes, a bookshelf, and the crappy loveseat from Craig's house.

They'd shoved a few more things Tetris-style into the hatch of Craig's Subaru because fuck if they wanted to make two trips. That was just the efficient and smart thing to do even if it made Tweek nervous because Craig couldn't see out of his rear windshield.

He stepped into the apartment and frowned. Had that cupboard been open when they'd left earlier?

...must've been. Maybe Craig was a chronic non-shutter of doors. He did leave his bedroom door open all the time.

Tweek closed it and then started about making sure that they would have room to get everything inside. He would think about it later. Or never. That was ideal.

His mind stayed occupied for three whole hours, watching Craig and Clyde bring up each piece of furniture while Tweek held open doors and said things like “Wait hold on don't turn yet!” and “Gah! Higher! You're gonna hit the banister!”

 

Craig was sweating by the time they'd brought the last box up (more books he'd forgotten at his parents' house). Tweek kept glancing at the dark stain building at the nape of Craig's blue t-shirt, and the way that he kept flapping the hem of it for some air flow.

“Holy shit,” Clyde groaned, flopping onto the loveseat that was just sitting in the middle of the living room. “Listen, you guys are like, my fam and all that, but when you move out of this place, I'm gonna be too busy to move furniture.”

“Convenient,” Craig grunted, taking his hat off and running a hand through his damp hair before putting it back on. No wonder he was so hot.

“Thanks for the help though Clyde. We would have had to take one thing at a time in Craig's car.” Tweek sat down on a box of books, feeling warm himself even though he'd done the minimum.

“Don't mention it Tweeker,” Clyde waved off easily, “You guys just owe me a beer when you're in town next.”

“We can't buy you a beer and you know that,” Craig reminded him, but Clyde shrugged in return.

“Steal one from your dad, I don't care how you get it. You just owe me.” He patted himself, presumably in search of keys. “Okay. I'm gonna go outside and have a cigarette before I get outta here.”

“I'll come with you,” Craig offered, stretching his arms over his head. “Back in a sec Tweek.” Craig didn't smoke and Tweek knew he honestly didn't like the smell, but it wasn't going to stop him from hanging out with his buddy on the porch while Clyde puffed away.

“Yeah, no problem. See you Clyde. Drive safe. And say hi to everyone back home for us!” Tweek watched the two of them leave and listened as two pairs of footsteps pounded down the stairs. Quiet now. He stood up and went to his room. Now that the bed was in here he might as well start assembling it, which he sat down on the floor and started to attempt.

Not three minutes into the task and he heard it.

_Eeeee..._

Tweek's neck snapped up so fast he was pretty sure he hurt himself. What the fuck was that? He waited with baited breath to hear something else- and when nothing came, when he heard nothing except the soft rumble of Craig and Clyde conversing down on the porch, he decided to ignore it. He rubbed the back of his neck with a little wince. 

It was just one of those house noises. He was starting to recognize most of them- the oven clicking, the walls settling, the weird noise that the pipes made sometimes.

His bed screwed together with just an allen wrench. Thank fuck. If it was anything more complicated Tweek was _sure_ he would fuck it up.

After a few more minutes of silence, he heard the creak of the screen door and the sound of Craig's footsteps returning up the stairs. Heard the front door open, then shut. The sound of Craig closing a cupboard door. Then he was in the doorway.

“Clyde take off?” Tweek asked, looking up.

“Yeah.” Craig moved along the hall down towards his own bedroom. “I'm gonna deflate my mattress, you want me to do yours too?"

“Yeah, thanks!” Tweek called back. He wished he didn't have to deflate it. That meant he wasn't going to be able to sleep in Craig's room any more. He'd been sleeping good in there. At least the last couple of days he had.

Had to be a big boy now and go sleep in his own room. Good lord it was like he was 6 all over again and was too scared to sleep in his own bed.

He was 18 and too scared to sleep in his own bed.

“No, I won't, don't worry.” He heard hissing from the other room. Tweek bowed his head over his bedframe again, awkwardly scooting around it so he could work on the other corner. “...did you ever figure out when you were meeting with that coffee guy?”

“Nngh... who? Oh, that guy- yeah, um, I e-mailed him yesterday.” He hadn't. Tweek immediately stopped what he was doing and set himself a phone reminder EMAIL COFFEE MAN for later that evening so he didn't forget. Otherwise he was totally going to forget. “I haven't heard back though.”

“I'm sure you'll get an interview with him, he's your dad's buddy. Haven't you already met the guy?”

“Not since I was like, 10.” Tweek put his phone aside and picked up the allen wrench again. His fingers were trembling just enough to cause him to drop it, and he picked it back up. “He probably doesn't remember me. Or if he does he remembers how much of a weirdo I was- gah!” Dropped it again.

“You weren't that weird.”

“Craig don't lie.”

“Kay.”

“I just- I just want to make a good impression, you know? I only get one shot!" 

“Course. Let me know when you're gonna go talk to him and I'll make sure your shirt is buttoned up right.”

Typical Craig. Typical nice Craig. Being all thoughtful and shit. He was only like that to Tweek though, which he was secretly grateful for and greedy for all at once.

“Thanks.” Bedframe now assembled Tweek stood up and started to gingerly drag his mattress over it. It was heavy but not too heavy for him to move. It smelled like his parents' house and that was a welcome comfort already, maybe he _would_ sleep better on his own bed.

He was going to have to, didn't really have a choice now that his air mattress was deflated in the other room.

He had his back to the door which allowed Craig to catch him by surprise and lob a wad of sheets at him. Tweek caught all of them with the back of his head (“Oh Jesus!”) and fumbled to not become a sheet ghost. He heard Craig chuckle and heard the floor creak as he moved on into the kitchen.

“You suck dude,” Tweek sorted the fitted sheet apart from the not-fitted sheet and started putting the former on his mattress.

“Yeah I know.”

And then Tweek heard something that made him pause.

It was the sound of a cupboard door closing, and Craig's soft voice muttering to himself: _“I swear I just shut that..._ ”


	5. Thursday

Tweek had an interview with Coffee Guy on Friday afternoon. Craig had to go do some last minute school enrollment stuff at the university which left Tweek to catch the bus. Which was a _huge_ fucking bummer because he could have used a pep talk beforehand.

He was nervous. Public transportation wasn't exactly a new thing but you could get anywhere in South Park by walking. Not here.

What if he got on the wrong bus? What if he forgot his stop and missed his interview?

Fuck. The pressure was almost too much. Tweek hadn't stopped thinking about it since he'd gotten the reply email and his mind was already exhausted from racing.

Craig had helped him pick out a pair of black slacks and one of his many collared shirts with respectable pinstripes on them. Business casual suited Tweak just fine, anything looser made him look small and he didn't care for that shit at all.

The problem though, was that the slacks smelled. Like stale coffee. Not rotten or anything, just kind of musky. It wasn't ideal.

“Just wash 'em,” Craig had said.

“...we don't have a fucking washer and dryer,” It occurred to Tweek as he was saying it, not a once did it occur to him that he might have to travel to do laundry. Laundromats were sketchy. There were a few in town, each one less desirable than the next.

“Yeah we do dude, it's downstairs.”

“Downstairs- you mean like-?”

“In the basement Tweek.”

Oh. Of course they were.

“How do you get in the basement?” Tweek didn't recall seeing another door in the foyer. That would make the most sense to him in terms of location, the hell could they have stuck yet another door onto this place?”

“The back door. You can use one of my detergent pods.”

And here he was, now. At the back door. At the back door where the paint was thick as it was in the front of the house except more chipped. The chipped parts had just been painted over again. There wasn't a back porch, just a door in the back of the house with a single brick step in front of it.

“Hope Craig finds my body soon,” Tweek found himself muttering, adjusting the pants where they were slung over his shoulder and shuffling a little closer to the step.

Even the doorknob had been painted, what the fuck?

When Tweek grasped the knob it turned with some difficulty, probably because somebody had painted the fucking lock (who did that shit, seriously?) but once it was open, it swung open, heavily, as though the only thing keeping it from hanging on it's hinges was that crappy painted latch.

There was a landing. And then to the immediate right, a door. The fuck was in here? Was this some kind of closet? He nearly reached for the handle before the thought occurred to him that it might be their neighbor's front door and he grimaced.

He took a step onto the landing, and looked directly ahead of him.

Tweek found himself staring down a length of unfinished wooden stairs. Just wooden steps atop an ancient wooden frame. No carpet, no stain, just rickety looking stairs that headed downwards. Into the darkness. Great.

He took a deep breath in some attempt to steady himself and closed his eyes, lifting a hand to his brow and pressing a thumb into his temple. Easy does it. Breathe in, out, in, out.

This house was too much wood... it would be so easy for it to catch fire.

“Fuck me,” Tweek whispered, taking the first couple of shaky steps into the basement. Down. He was leaving the door open, whatever daylight was left was going to be precious to him the deeper down he went. Fuck why didn't he bring his phone? He could have used that flashlight.

It was so quiet down here.

Step 2, 3, 4, 5, each one creaking beneath his weight.

And then-

Something whisper-thin brushed his cheek, and Tweek shrieked and flailed and dropped the pants, smacking wildly at the invisible offender. He could still feel it, oh, fuck, spiderwebs, oh god oh Jesus-

The lights turned on.

Tweek looked up. He had ran face-first into a string that hung down from the bulb and his fingers were tangled around it in his flapping. Oh. Goddammit.

“Rrgh... losing my goddamn mind,” He muttered to himself, swallowing back his racing heartbeat and leaning down to pick up the dropped pants. They were covered in dust now, good thing he needed to be washing them anyway. _“Get it together man!”_

He continued the rest of the way into the basement.

God damn. He really needed to stop being so jumpy. Maybe he could ask his doctor to up his anxiety medication. Whenever he had the courage to call and make another appointment.

The basement was as unfinished as the stairs, but it was not the same thing as what you would think of as a modern unfinished basement. An 'unfinished basement' meant that it wasn't carpeted or painted and that the walls were usually just bare drywall. Some exposed pipes and a rug maybe. Something you could work with if you really had to.

This was stone. An actual stone basement with a poured concrete floor that was starting to chip in places. The walls were stacked stone masonry that was sloppily grouted together and even crumbling in some places. Amid the dust was just... stuff. An old kayak. Disassembled dog cage. A shopping cart. Old bike. Lots of milk crates. More boxes than Tweek could count.

Whose stuff was this? Certainly not the other guy who lived here, it looked like it hadn't been touched in months.

There was the washer and dryer, placed as though at random five or six feet apart from each other in a corner section of the basement, where the walls looked exceptionally bad. There were just... chunks of wall missing. Black gaps in the spaces where Tweek could only imagine rats and bugs and murderers could crawl.

A mouse trap in one about waist-height confirmed the suspicion.

Slowly he moved into the dusty space with his pants clutched to his chest and stopped in front of the appliances. They looked to be in working order at least and Tweek had the life experience enough to know how to run a washing machine.

He opened the lid, tossed in his pants, tossed in the detergent pod he'd had in his pocket, and closed it. Turned the knob and pushed start. Water immediately started to spew into the chamber and Tweek could hear it very clearly gurgling through the pipes, rushing through sections of wall around him.

Fuck this shit man.

He got the fuck out of there pretty quick. The painted door was heavy to pull closed behind him but once it was secured into it's latch there it stayed. Tweek moved on quickly and kept his head down as he went back to the front door.

The Mustang was still in it's usual spot. Tweek was starting to wonder if it was busted or if the guy just didn't really go anywhere else. Maybe he worked from home. Or maybe he was a recluse. Or a psycho. You never could know your neighbors these days, who were they really?

He glanced over his shoulder before he went back into the house. Fuck he felt jittery. At home he might have sparked up to ease the tension but he was bone dry and too broke to do anything about it.

_I need a hobby,_ he thought to himself as he opened the upstairs door into their apartment. Locked it behind him like he always did.

He passed through the kitchen and closed the cupboard without thinking about it. He needed to _do_ something, because now that he'd been sitting around an old, creepy house for a straight week with no television or internet, he was bored, and when Tweek got bored, he let his imagination get away from him.

Maybe he could just... sit? And... read? Or something? Something, something he could occupy himself with for at least the next hour until Craig got home.

Tweek went to his bedroom and closed the door behind him. He only ever did that when Craig wasn't home. That way if someone came into the house then he could just hide until they went away.

He picked a book at random from his collection; fuck how long had it been since he'd picked up a _book?_ He sure as shit couldn't remember the last time he'd sat down to read. Usually he would surf the net on his laptop or his phone or he would stream something. Not here in Shitty McShitHouse.

 

 

Time passed and Tweek was on a third page. He just kept reading each paragraph and then immediately forgetting what he'd just read. Every time he kept his eyes trained on the page for too long the words would just start to mush together.

A sound gave him pause.

Some soft thumping... something scraping against something else and then another, slightly louder thump. Almost sounded like a door but it wasn't the same sound that their door made- oh, had to be the guy downstairs. Maybe he was actually going somewhere.

Tweek waited to hear the sound of a car crunching on gravel, or an engine start up.

When nothing came he sat, slowly, and moved to the window, pulling aside the sheet-curtain and peering out into the front yard.

Where he also saw nothing.

He would have _sworn_ that he'd heard a door shut, where the hell had the guy gone?

A visit to Craig's room and a peek out the window there affirmed that the Mustang was still in the lot. Maybe the guy had walked? Or rode his bike?

That had to be it, he'd heard all that scraping and thumping and that was probably the guy trying to get his bike out the front door. That made sense.

Maybe it was just being in Craig's room that made him think rationally. Craig was King Rational. Tweek was hoping that some of the mojo might have finally rubbed off onto him.

He sat down on his best friend's bed and remained there for a long minute, looking at the room.

It made him miss Craig's room back in South Park.

What was it that he felt just now, welling up in his chest and knotting in his throat? The urge to cry? No, that tended to hurt more, and Tweek, now lifting both hands to drag through his tousled hair, recognized it as guilt.

Guilt because living with Craig and being his roommate was a wish come true. He'd been thinking about it since middle school. They both had. And now that they were grown up and on their own it had finally happened. And Tweek was _miserable._

Both hands curled into fists and he squeezed, pain prickling his scalp.

He didn't like it here. He didn't like the old house and the way it sounded or the way it smelled and the _bathroom_ God he hated the bathroom so much, and actually, fuck the basement too!

There it was, the sound of gravel crunching beneath tires, and Tweek jumped at the sound of Craig's Subie rolling into the lot. Half stricken by relief and half stricken by the panic of potentially being caught just creeping around in Craig's room. Tweek bolted back into his bedroom and shut the door. Then he sat on the bed with his knees pressed together, and he waited.

Eventually he heard Craig's footsteps coming up the stairs, and he fidgeted with his fingers and stared at the door. Craig's keys rattled in the lock, and then he was opening the door.

“ _Tweek what the fuck?_ ” There was a surprised edge to his voice that Tweek did not expect and in an instant his heart was racing, feeling his stomach sinking to his knees; oh shit what had he done wrong?

Hands shaking now he went to his bedroom door. “Grgh, oh Jesus, oh God what now, what now...” And with all the nervousness of a gazelle approaching a pride of lions he slunk down the hallway into the kitchen. “C-Craig? Look I don't know wha- JESUS CHRIST!”

Every single cupboard was open. Every one of them yawning open as far as their hinges would allow. The ones above the sink and below the sink and even the pantry door.

“Whoa-wha-?” Tweek took a step back from the scene as though he'd stepped on a spider, “Oh, God, dude, I _swear_ I didn't do it, I-I-I don't know what happened, man-”

Craig was looking at him. Tweek couldn't meet his eyes.

_He thinks I'm fucking crazy!_

“...It's not THAT big of a deal dude, I'm just saying, surprised me is all...” Craig seemed to want to drop it then and there, and, adjusting the shopping bags he had under one arm he used the other to start closing the cupboards.

“No, seriously Craig, I didn't open all the cupboards. Why would I do that. That's stupid.” His voice cracked again, goddammit.

“I believe you dude. It's just weird.”

“No shit it's weird.” Tweek rubbed his hands together nervously, fidgeting and finally now lifting his eyes to watch as Craig pulled the pantry door closed. “C-Craig? You DO believe me right?”

Craig looked around at him. Longer than a beat this time. “Yes. I believe you.” Tweek searched his eyes for... something, he wasn't sure what he was expecting to see there.

Fuck he didn't believe him. Tweek just knew it. He forced out more words despite the feeling of sinking into the floor. “...what did you get at the store?”

“School supplies,” Craig started to unpack the shopping bags on the tiny counter space. Notebooks and binders and pens and that kind of junk. “Nothing exciting.”

“Who says three ring binders aren't exciting?” Tweek felt cold. Maybe some coffee would help warm him up. He edged around Craig to get to the other available block of counter so he could pop a coffee pod into the machine. Fuck, idiot, think of something else to say. “Are you nervous to start classes?”

“Less nervous, more anxious. I'm not looking forward to more homework.” Craig had been bitten by the ambition bug at some point in his life, because, actually, working for NASA sounded 'kinda sweet' to him and thought he would go for it.

Tweek nodded slowly even though he had his back turned. He could feel his eye twitching a bit and reached up to rub it. “Just a guess but I think astrophysics is probably going to involve a lot of that.”

“You're lucky dude,” Craig sighed, “I wish I could just work. Save some money.”

Coffee pot hissed. Tweek let his breath out in a long sigh right alongside it. “I don't know, I have a feeling this is going to suck just as much balls as your degree. Because, you know, everyone aspires to work in a coffee distribution plant.”

“There's worse jobs.”

Tweek had to agree with him there. He could always be a garbage man or a senator or something. “Hey Craig, have you checked out the basement at all? It's really creepy down there.”

“Yeah?” Craig was taking a permanent marker and writing his course numbers at the top of his notebooks. Which he was then putting into corresponding binders, to be nice and organized, whence it would remain for an entire week. “I haven't seen it.”

“Go down there with me when I get my pants.” Tweek paused, mug in both hands. “...please,” He added, almost like an afterthought, and sipped his coffee.

Jesus Christ he was pathetic.

“Sure dude.” And again God bless you Craig Tucker for being so fucking chill. Tweek almost wanted to hug him.

“Cool, I'm gonna- I'm gonna set a timer or something so I don't forget about them-” He edged around Craig in the tiny kitchen space again and disappeared down the hallway towards his room. If nothing else just to avoid forcing more awkward conversation.

And that was the worst thing ever because conversation with Craig had never been awkward to Tweek before, not since the very beginning of their friendship.

...why had all of the cupboard doors been open?

He HADN'T done it. He had not. He would have remembered taking every single step.

Tweek set his coffee down on his nightstand and sat on the edge of his bed. He put his elbows on his knees and put his chin in his palms.

Who else would have done it though?

Certainly not Craig. Tweek would have heard him do it. He didn't even have _time_ to do it, not when you opened the apartment door and boom there was the kitchen.

Maybe they'd all just kind of... opened on...their own?

Tweek frowned at himself, sitting on his bed.

That was the stupidest goddamn thing ever.

“Ghosts,” He muttered instead, flopping sideways onto his pillow and rolling over to face the wall. It was either ghosts or he was actually losing his fucking mind. At this point he wasn't sure which one sounded worse.

 


	6. Thursday Night

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i will begin to update regularly at an unspecified time on wednesdays. 
> 
> in the meantime have another microchapter

Tweek woke so suddenly that it was like he'd been slapped. He could still hear it ringing in his ears. A sound... what had that been?

He was immediately wide awake and petrified. His heart had leaped into his throat and was thumping away and choking back his breath- Jesus, breathe!

He forced himself to gulp in a mouthful of air and felt his skin prickle with cold sweat.

What _was_ that? He had definitely heard it and he certainly had not been dreaming.

Tweek held his breath again and strained every fiber in his being to hear it again. Something had happened, he'd _heard_ it. And he had to hear it again, he had to justify that it was real, and, most importantly, he needed Craig to hear it, because it was so loud there was no way it wouldn't have woken him up. Craig was a heavy sleeper but he couldn't be that heavy.

The silence was absolutely goddamn deafening.

Sitting up Tweek gathered the blankets around himself and stayed in place with eyes wide open. He didn't dare fall asleep, he had to hear it again.

But he didn't, and when Craig got up at 9 or so in the morning he was still sitting there with his eyes wide open and raw.

 


	7. Saturday (Week 2)

There was something wrong.

There was something very, very wrong, and Tweek couldn't put his finger on it. It was bothering him immensely. It felt... uncomfortable. The feeling that something is so very off but it's so subtle that you can't figure out what it is.

Tweek found himself pacing back and forth slowly between the kitchen and his bedroom. Not really doing anything, just pacing. His fingers were trembling a little bit and he fidgeted them in the sleeves of his shirt.

What was it? What was wrong?

He tried to tell himself that he was just anxious about the job interview yesterday. It hadn't been a _complete_ disaster but Tweek had been so goddamn tired that morning he was lucky he didn't fall asleep on the bus there. He was sure he'd made an ass of himself somehow.

“Tweek, you're making _me_ nervous.” He heard Craig call him from the ajar door of his bedroom. Tweek shuffled back down the hall in the other direction and stood for a moment in Craig's doorway, looking in.

Craig was laying on his bed with his laptop balanced on his stomach. The internet guy was supposed to come install the WiFi on Monday (at long last) but in the meantime Craig had plenty of pirated movies on his computer that he could watch at his leisure. Looked like he'd been doing exactly that.

“I know you're worried about the interview,” Craig craned his head back to look at him and Tweek could only briefly meet his eyes. _Oh buddy, if you only knew._ “But you gotta stop pacing, you're going to wear a dent in the floor. Come watch Iron Man with me.”

Tweek shifted awkwardly in the doorway. “...which Iron Man?”

“The first one.”

“All right.”

Craig shifted over and sat up, adjusting his pillows against the wall to give them some semblance of a couch. He made room for Tweek and he crawled right on up, settling into the space next to Craig. The laptop was pushed into the middle so that they could both see the screen and Tweek leaned in with his shoulder almost touching Craig's.

Looked like he'd just started the movie. Cool. Tweek was grateful for the distraction. After just a few minutes however he found himself paying less attention to the film and more attention to the smell of Craig's deodorant. Or maybe it was his shampoo. Kind of a musky, spicy smell.

As they sat there, Tweek waited for the uncomfortable feeling to go away. It didn't. Not even if he closed his eyes and focused on just the sound of Robert Downey Jr.'s voice and the scent clinging to Craig's clothes.

Why wasn't it going away? He was fine, everything was fine, nothing was going wrong right now at this very moment. He and Craig were just sitting together on his bed and watching a movie and literally nothing else was happening. Why did he feel so weird? It felt like the air was tingling.

“Craig? I'm gonna get some coffee,” Tweek forced himself to slide away from Craig on the bed and sit up. Coffee would help, coffee always made him feel better even when everything else looked shitty.

“I'll pause it,” Craig tapped the space bar on his computer to do so and as Tweek left the room he glanced over his shoulder to see Craig stretch.

Nice of him to pause it even if Tweek wasn't very invested.

In the kitchen he filled the pot's reservoir with water and popped in a coffee pod. He couldn't hear anything from Craig's room and couldn't hear anything from downstairs either. It was nice to not hear shit once in a while, especially in a house as fond of making noises as theirs were.

The coffee machine started to hum gently. Tweek slowly brought his arms up around himself and rubbed at his forearms. It was kind of cold in here... was there a window open?

Goosebumps prickled on his neck and he held his breath. He could feel his heartbeat start to quicken.

_Shh, nothing's wrong, nothing's wrong, nothing's happening..._

The coffee pot made it's usual hiss, and Tweek, remembering, slowly exhaled along with it. Steam started to rise from the machine as it brewed into his mug. Tweek couldn't help but to glance over his shoulder.

He wasn't sure what he was expecting to see, but he saw nothing. Nobody else was in the room, nobody here but him and Craig and probably their weird neighbor.

When the mug had filled the machine shut off. Tweek reached for the handle, and the events that followed suit took mere seconds to occur.

Something moved out the corner of Tweek's eye. He jerked his head to the side, and in the nanosecond it took him to turn around and see what it was, the coffee mug _tipped over_ before his eyes and in that second of splitting panic, instinct kicked in and he tried to catch it by the handle and somehow succeeded.

His hand _seared._ The pain was white hot and for a moment blinding, and he buckled. He must have been making some kind of sound because suddenly Craig was there behind him and he was being pulled bodily over to the sink, arm thrust under the faucet under cold water. Or what would soon be cold water.

“AH, fuck! Jesus fuck that _hurts!_ ” Tweek slammed his other hand onto the counter in agony, trying to squirm away from the spray of water, and slowly, as it grew cooler, the pain started to dull.

After a second or two the shrill ringing in his ears started to fade. He could hear Craig's voice tight with worry. “Tweek! Hey, dude, you with me?”

Tweek blinked, his eyes were full of tears that he tried to quickly wipe away. Craig was still hanging onto him, one arm under Tweek's armpits to hold him up while the other had a grip on his elbow to keep him under the faucet. “Fuck, man,” He squeezed his eyes shut and took a couple of deep breaths like his therapist told him to do. “God damn... that hurts like a motherfucker...”

“Take it easy Tweek. What the hell happened?”

Yeah good fucking question, 'what happened', like Tweek was supposed to have any semblance of a clue. What happened? What had happened? What had he just seen? A squat, bottom-heavy coffee mug, one that didn't just up and tip over like someone had knocked it asunder. Coffee mugs did not do that and that was not how gravity worked.

“Tweek?”

“Huh? Fuck, it was- I just- I dropped it, okay? I just dropped it and tried to catch it and I fucked up.” He stared at his hand in the sink. Splotches of red were starting to blossom on the surface of his skin. Tweek was no stranger to burns. He was such a shaky person that sometimes holding a cup of coffee was nigh goddamn impossible.

But that was different, and Tweek struggled to find explanation. Jesus Christ he could _not_ tell Craig. That would be so bad.

“...Craig?”

“Yeah?”

“You can let go of me now, if you want. I can stand.”

Craig's arms slipped from around him and he and the warm figure parted ways, though not before Craig's hand skimmed the breadth of Tweek's shoulders in a soothing rub. It was such a simple and endearing gesture that Tweek wanted to start crying again.

“I'll go see if we have burn cream or something.” Craig's voice faded as he walked down the hall towards the bathroom. His parents had bought them what amounted to a first aid kit and hopefully there would be something in it that did them some good.

Tweek pulled his hand out of the water to see if it was done hurting yet (it wasn't) and flinched. He tried not to look at the puddle of coffee pooling on the floor, still steaming. Craig was probably going to clean that up. God dammit. Why couldn't he do anything right?

If he listened closely he could hear Craig rifling around in the bathroom. And behind that, a soft thumping coming from downstairs. The gurgle of the water in the pipes. All of it sounded so far away.

“Yeah, we're in luck,” Craig returned to the kitchen mere seconds later with a small tube of ointment and a roll of gauze. “How's it feeling?”

“Like shit,” Tweek tried to flex his fingers and grimaced. “I think it's blistering dude.”

“You really got yourself,” Craig stepped around the coffee puddle and returned to the counter. “Here, wash it first and then we'll bandage it.”

They didn't have liquid hand soap in the kitchen, just dish soap. Hopefully that would do the job. It was antibacterial, right?

Gingerly, Tweek picked up the dish soap with his other hand and dribbled a little on his burns before carefully (and with some degree of whimpering) rubbing the soap in. It hurt. His hand hurt. The burns were starting to swell and Tweek just knew they were going to be gross and blistery.

Craig was standing there beside him, patient as the grave, waiting for him to rinse. Once Tweek had done so he offered Craig the burned hand, which was taken gently in Craig's, and he started to carefully dab some of the burn cream onto the raw spots of Tweek's hand.

Tweek took the opportunity to bow his head forward onto Craig's shoulder, and felt his friend chuckle softly. He just listened to Craig's breathing and tried to ignore the pain of someone else touching his hand. Craig was gentle though. God bless him.

He couldn't think of anything to say so he remained silent, eyes closed and forehead pressed into Craig's collarbone. The burn ointment was cooling only for a moment before Craig started to gingerly wrap him in gauze.

This was going to make things awkward when he started his job. Hey, sorry, I'm one-handed now, hopefully I can still do literally anything to be of use...

Why'd it have to be his fucking right hand?

Everything sucked.

Fuck.

“There.”

Tweek finally lifted his head up to examine Craig's handiwork, which wasn't hospital quality by any stretch of the word but it was secure and would protect the burns for now at least. He let all of his breath out in a sigh and gave his fingers a little wiggle. “...thank you Craig.”

“It's all good. Go sit, okay? I'm gonna clean this up.” Craig gave him a pat on the shoulder and Tweek slunk back down the hall towards Craig's room. Yep, of course he was going to clean up after him. Dammit. Tweek didn't deserve him, especially not as a best friend.

He sat down on Craig's bed and leaned back against the wall, looking at the laptop screen which had gone momentarily dark. The movie was probably still paused. He'd wait until Craig got back and then maybe they'd be able to just keep watching, and Tweek maybe could forget about the events of the last hour for a minute.

Doubtful but it was at least an idea.

TweeK started to zone out as he waited. His eyelids slacked and his vision blurred and he listened to the sounds of the house. The soft thumping from downstairs had faded now but he could still hear the pipes. It was almost soothing.

He didn't even hear Craig come back down the hall, so focused on one noise that he didn't hear the other, and when Craig re-appeared in the doorway Tweek jumped a little bit. “Ngh!”

He was holding a mug of coffee- a new one, to make up for the one Tweek had dropped.

“Oh my god, did you make me more coffee?”

“Yeah. You did still want some, right?” Craig crossed the room and handed it over, Tweek took the handle very carefully in his other hand. “I'll drink it if you don't.”

“Nono, I want it- ...thanks dude, you didn't have to.” Tweek sounded nearly guilty as Craig crawled into the space next to him and settled in once more.

“No big deal.” Craig replied easily, tapping the spacebar on his laptop to wake the computer back up. And then just like that, there they were again, shoulder to shoulder and watching Iron Man.

Tweek resisted the urge to drop his head onto Craig's shoulder, despite his sudden need to shower his best friend in thanks and affection. What the fuck had he done to deserve Craig, he wondered? Certainly nothing came to mind but damned if he wasn't grateful.

He sipped his coffee and watched Robert Downey Jr make poor decisions, and tried, for now, to avoid the creeping feeling of unease that was once more beginning to well. 

 


	8. Wednesday (Week 3)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter kinda has porn in it  
> wow

Tweek's job at the coffee plant was decidedly not fun. He was on his feet for 10 hours a day and came home smelling like coffee grounds. Craig said he didn't mind but Tweek was always self conscious of it. It clung to his shoes and the drab colored coveralls he had to wear as his uniform.

It wasn't like the job was hard. He was a tool crib attendant. It basically meant that when something in the factory broke they came to his cage and requested parts and tools which Tweek checked out and inventoried.

Didn't have to do any of the repairs himself but he was sure able to read labels and lists. Even an idiot could do that. Probably.

It was _far_ easier than Craig's homework. Tweek had taken a peek over his shoulder one day while he was studying for his entry level Astronomy course. It was the most complicated math the likes of which Tweek had never seen. There were _triangles_ in it.

The change in pace- Craig having begun school and Tweek his job- was starting to amp up the pressure to function as a real live adult. It was hard, like Tweek thought it would be. Bills would be due at the end of the month and already the calendar seemed to be slipping away.

And the house didn't help.

And Craig...

Their schedules immediately misaligned, with Craig going to school in the mornings and Tweek working second shift. By the time Craig came home from his classes Tweek had already caught the bus to the factory and wouldn't return until around 11 at night.

They hadn't seen much of each other since Sunday night. Tweek was actually starting to miss him, which was a bizarre thing to feel about somebody that you shared a living space with, but the house could feel so huge and empty sometimes when it was just him in the morning.

He already didn't sleep well- too nervous, always tossing and turning. Waiting for the next noise, the next shadow to move.

On the occasions that he did manage to sleep it was dreamless and heavy, what he figured was the result of his body just being too exhausted to keep up.

Except this morning, it was light, and fitful. Craig's alarm had woken him up and now he lay there in bed, fractionally conscious and listening to the sounds that Craig made as he got ready for the day.

Tweek knew his routine. He would snooze his alarm once or twice before actually getting out of bed. Then he would go to the bathroom, start filling the bathtub, and then probably take a leak and brush his teeth or shave or do whatever bathroom-y things that Craig did.

Then he would bathe. Afterwards, get dressed, and brew coffee, and maybe eat something for breakfast. Nothing that required effort. Cereal. Bagel maybe. Toast.

Then he'd either sit in his room for the last half an hour and surf the net on his phone because they _finally_ fucking had WiFi. And then he would leave at 8:30 am.

Craig seemed a little ahead of schedule today. Tweek hadn't even heard him snooze his alarm. He could hear the water running in the tub and rustling gently through the pipes surrounding. It was a sound so familiar by now that Tweek came to search for it whenever the house felt too quiet.

Tweek felt an itch on his leg, reached down and scratched it, and then rolled over in his bed and adjusted the blankets. Maybe he'd try and go back to sleep this time. He could use it.

And maybe he might have in time, save for the uncomfortable feeling of being watched that rose after a few minutes' peace. There were eyes on him. Someone else was there.

Tweek rolled over and looked.

Craig was standing in his doorway.

Tweek flinched. _“Jesus Christ, dude.”_

He didn't say anything, just stood there for a minute and leaned on the wall looking in. Tweek sat up on his elbow and squinted, trying to see his face in the dim. _“What?”_

Still he didn't say anything, and Tweek started to feel a prickle of unease. Craig's lithe shadow was crossing the room towards him and almost in an instant he was kneeling on Tweek's bed. The weight of his knee sinking into the mattress felt very real and Tweek was immediately wide awake. _“What are you doi-”_

Craig's form loomed over him, warm and smothering, and Tweek took a shaky inhale of breath that muffled immediately beneath Craig's lips.

_Oh holy shit Jesus Christ mother of God._

Immediately Tweek was flooded with a sense of longing. His hands slid up to Craig's damp hair as the latter braced himself on either side of Tweek's body. So unexpected and yet not in the least bit unwelcome.

It'd been so long since he'd kissed anyone and Craig's lips were so soft and his face smooth and warm, freshly shaven, and Tweek's lungs were full of that spicy smell of him- oh, that felt _good!_

Craig settled his body weight into him and Tweek felt delightfully compressed, safe and sound between a bed and Craig's frame. His tongue tasted like toothpaste. And that kiss... it was just what kissing Craig should have been. It was _fiery_ and bold as the strongest of coffees.

Their hips aligned _just so_ and Tweek heard himself moaning softly into Craig's mouth. He was immediately hard, flooded with a cocktail of embarrassment and adrenaline, and he somehow hoped Craig wouldn't be able to feel it beneath his blankets.

He could hear Craig panting. His hips twitched and rolled and dug into Tweek's with purpose and Tweek just couldn't believe that this wasn't a dream. What was going through Craig's head right now?

Craig sat up and Tweek searched for his face in the darkness but couldn't see it. _“Craig?”_ He whispered into the gloom, and there came no response from Craig other than to scoot backwards.

Tweek was starting to get nervous again. His heart was pounding so hard that he was sure he could feel the blood pumping in his veins. Each beat was so _loud_. His breath hitched as Craig started to drag the blankets down and Tweek almost yanked them back up.

Almost.

But he didn't.

The last thing he saw before he shut his eyes was Craig leaning down over the lump in his pajamas. _Oh Jesus oh God oh lord._ He held his breath, terrified that Craig might suddenly change his mind or pull away or something, anything other than press his hot mouth to the front of his pants.

“ _Holy shit,”_ Tweek was downright panting now.Little whimpers escaping him that he couldn't hear. He wasn't going to last a second if Craig touched him, let alone suck him off. Tweek found himself praying silently that Craig wasn't going to be annoyed at him for it.

In fact he was more than a little at himself for it, too.

Craig's hot mouth was on his cock. Sucking and bathing it with his tongue like he was a fucking pro. Tweek gasped. _OhGodohGodyesss..._ This was going to be a short encounter. Why couldn't it have gone on any longer than this? Why did he have to have such a short fuse?

“ _Mmm-!”_

And then Tweek woke up, very suddenly, by sitting bolt upright in his bed and staring blindly at the room around him.

 

It took a couple of seconds. Several dozen thoughts went through his mind at once: _what happened? What was that noise? Where's Craig? Was I dreaming? What_ was _that? What is this on my stomach?_

His ears were ringing as though someone had yelled in them. Sitting there, in his empty bedroom, the gray light of dawn fighting to pour in through the blanketed windows. Something had woken him up. Something... slamming. The door? Oh, probably just Craig leaving for class then.

Tweek looked at the clock. It was just past 9.

Craig... was at school, and had been for at least half an hour. Tweek took a breath and let it out slowly, counting backwards from 10. Right... the slam... had obviously been... their neighbor? Yeah, had to be. That was rational thinking, like Craig always did, and he had to think rational in order to make it through the next 10 minutes.

Listening hard as he could for a solid few seconds- and nothing else came, no follow up noise, nothing. Tweek swallowed and slid out of bed.

And then he froze, because there was something cold and sticky in his lap, and _then_ he remembered his dream.

“JESUS!” He cried aloud to absolutely nobody, an uncomfortably familiar wave of adrenaline washing over him. Tweek might as well have been a statue for a minute before deciding suddenly that he needed some coffee, and needed to clean himself up.

He did the latter first, wiping himself clean with his own pajama pants (which he would _have_ to wash now and fuck the fucking basement!) before changing into other, slightly cleaner pajama pants.

He couldn't believe he'd had a wet dream about Craig.

And yet he was completely, entirely, _utterly_ unsurprised.

Of course he felt... a little something special for Craig. He always had. Craig was his best friend and had been for literally all of his life (mostly what parts he cared to remember). He'd always been there, the centerpiece of their group of friends, the anchor to them all, really. Without him Tweek would have probably drifted forever.

Because Craig, despite everything, despite how much of a dickhead he could be when he wanted, despite how frank and overly-honest he was, Craig was a charismatic motherfucker who managed to attract people even if he didn't always want them.

Tweek went out into the kitchen, shuffling his feet as he went. He kept his eyes low to watch his step until the flooring changed and he'd entered the kitchen. Then he looked up.

All the cupboard doors were open.

He couldn't even think of something to say, not even a shocked _Jesus!_ or _Gah!_ or nothing. He was too exasperated with himself to deal with this fucking ghost right now.

He brewed coffee and closed all of the doors, and then tried to forget that this morning had even occurred.

He tried, except he literally thought about the dream every ten seconds while he was trying to go through the rest of his morning routine.

He tried, except he kept going over the scenario in his head over and over again, he tried, except that he kept hearing sounds from downstairs.

He saw something moving out of the corner of his eye every time he let his gaze focus on one thing too long. Every time he looked up it was gone. Which started to spook him a lot.

This happened regularly until he left for work.

 


	9. Saturday (Week 3)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> alternate chapter title: thump

It never seemed to stop. Not for him. He couldn't go a single day without turning his head to find a cupboard door opening slowly by itself. Or things tipping over or falling. Books would slide off of his shelf sometimes and clatter onto the floor. And all the while, in the background, muffled by an entire house level, was their neighbor.

Tweek sometimes heard scraping sounds. Banging. It was all so distant that he couldn't distinguish the unusual ones from the sounds of someone simply living there. He was sure he and Craig made noise as well but how often were they that loud?

The days were monotonous. Get up, go to work, come home, crash. Repeat. Was this it? Was this all there was?

“It'll get better,” Craig had said. “We're still figuring this out. It'll be fine dude.”

Easy for him to say when his parents sent him a monthly allowance and paid his rent while he went to school.

Tweek immediately wished that the bitter thought hadn't manifested, and felt ashamed of himself for thinking it. It wasn't like Craig was asking for it. At the same time he couldn't help but feel just a little jealous. Then he felt bad for feeling that, too.

Between the cycles of guilt there also came daily chunks of time where he just thought about Craig, and nothing else. Sometimes he came away from these periods with an awkward boner and sometimes he came away feeling lonelier and more isolated than ever before.

And all the while the hair on the back of his neck prickled. Unseen eyes burned into him from every dim corner. It was just never... comfortable. Tweek was beginning to equate the discomfort with his very existence.

Why did this have to be his life now? He hadn't wanted this. He just wanted... Craig. Craig who he only saw late at night when he'd gotten home from work and while Craig was getting ready for bed. Craig whose voice he'd nearly forgotten.

That might have been a little overdramatic, but Tweek was a dramatic person, and always had been. Which he knew wasn't healthy but he didn't exactly have a choice in the matter. His emotions tended to run wild even at his most medicated, but the ones he had about Craig were downright passionate.

He felt like a horny chihuahua. Small, shaky, constant humping movements.

It was end of the work week. Tweek was hoping to spend some time with Craig while they both had some down time. He'd been lucky enough to catch a Saturday off for the first time since he'd started his job and Craig seemed more than ready for a break from the studies.

He was supposed to be getting home from class in a couple hours. Tweek tried not to keep glancing at the clock. It was just making him more impatient.

_Thump._

Neighbor. Tweek got up to check for him at the window but the guy was just too quick. He must have been slippery as hell to keep getting in and out of the house unseen. Tweek had a sinking feeling that he was either a burglar or a serial killer or something like that because nobody else was that sneaky.

Also, fuck living in a haunted house with a serial killer.

Tweek jerked the curtain shut. It was not really a curtain- still just a bedsheet. It was as close as Tweek could get. He went back across the room to his bed and took his place in front of his laptop again, picking up the xBox controller he had plugged into it and unpausing his game.

It was the best thing he could do to distract himself when he was alone. It gave him something to focus on other than masturbating or listening to the weird noises or watching something fall off a shelf.

What else _could_ you do when life was a fuckin' mess?

“Fuck... _fuck_ ,” Tweek barely heard himself over the clicking of his controller and the sounds coming muffled out of his laptop speaker. It wasn't smart to have the laptop resting on the mattress directly- Craig said it would make it overheat faster- but oh well.

_Thump- CRASH!_

“GAH!” Tweek slammed the controller down and got to his feet in an instant, feeling his adrenaline spike as he stared at his open door. That had been from the kitchen- something glass had definitely broken.

He needed to take care of that. Craig was going to walk directly into the kitchen when he came into the front door and if he stepped on glass and got hurt Tweek would literally never forgive himself.

Tweek leaned out of the doorway and stared down the hall. He didn't hear anything else.

Holding his breath he started to make his way down the hall. Craig's door was slightly ajar and he didn't give it a second glance as he passed.

In the kitchen he looked down at the floor, where, after staring at the overpolished hardwood for a couple of silent minutes, he deduced that there was no glass to be seen. Anywhere. The floor was void of anything out of the ordinary.

“For fuck's sake,” He said aloud to whatever piece of shit ghost was listening. “Just leave me alone, will you?!”

Tweek turned and went back down the hall, and he passed Craig's room once more. This time his eyes trailed on the slice of darkness visible through the open door, and there, Tweek saw the black figure of someone standing there in the gloom.

He screamed, a full-on, blood curdling scream. Flight mode kicked in and Tweek ran the last few steps down the hallway and into his room. He slammed the door, wrenched the lock, and collapsed against the back of it, sliding to the floor and tearing both hands through his hair.

_Someoneisheresomeoneisheresomethingishereitsherewithmeitshereitshere_

Tears slid down his face. Panicked ones. He was already gasping for breath to stop himself hyperventilating, forehead bowed onto his knees and fingers locked together at the nape of his neck. His body tingled with fear, feeling both numbness and horrible pinpricks all at once. He might have even been rocking back and forth a little. He couldn't say for sure.

There was no way to delineate how long he sat there. Fifteen minutes, twenty? Thirty? Or had it been longer? He didn't remember what time it'd even been when he looked at the clock last. He sat there and he shivered and cried until his throat ached and his cheeks were raw.

Tweek's chest hurt and he wanted to go home. Where his parents were. Where he was safe. _And where he was without Craig._

Something, or someone, knocked on his bedroom door.

Tweek nearly leapt out of his skin- “JESUS CHRIST!” and for a second actually rounded on his heel and faced the door with his fists balled like he was going to kick the ghostly ass whatever it was on the other side. Flight was too tired, it was time for the fight instinct to kick in.

“Tweek? Dude it's me, why is your door locked?”

Oh sweet Jesus it was Craig.

“J-just a second! _Fuck, shit, oh God, oh Jesus, the pressure-_ ” Tweek scrubbed his face with the hem of his shirt but there was going to be no hiding the fact that he'd been in here freaking out.

With his breath held, he unlocked the door. There was a guilty little 'click' as he turned the bolt. Then he stepped back from it.

“...so can I come in or-”

“Yeah! Ugh, God, Jesus, sorry Craig-” Tweek hid his face in both hands as he heard Craig open the door, and at the same time he turned and staggered back over to his bed. “-yeah you can come in it's cool sorry-”

“Tweek, it's fine.”

He did _not_ want to look Craig in the eyes. Or in the face. Or even just look in Craig's general direction. In fact he kept his face turned away from him as Craig came to settle on his bed with him, directly opposite, and he 100% knew that he was being looked at. Tweek's face burned in shame.

“..what happened?” The softness of Craig's voice prodded him sharply in the guilt button. Tweek slowly lifted his eyes. They weighed a thousand pounds each.

He could not lie to Craig. Not even if he wanted to. And right now he really wanted to. But those dark, soft eyes were on him, searching his face, and his knees were only a laptop's width away from Craig's. Tweek reached out and slowly closed the screen on the computer and set it, along with the controller, aside, as he thought about how to tell Craig that he thought their house was fucking haunted.

Craig waited patiently. Bless him.

“I s-saw,” Tweek began tremulously. “I-I saw _something_ in your room today dude. I saw- I don't know what it was. It- it looked like there was a person standing there.” He looked down at his hands for a second.

“Oh, Jesus,” He looked up just in time to see Craig's eyebrows disappear into his hair. “Like an intruder?

“I don't know. It was just something.” Tweek didn't know how to explain it beyond that.

Craig was frowning now, his brow creased a little in concern. “The door was locked still when I came home. Nobody else is in the apartment. You're okay dude.” He reached out and gave Tweek's shoulder a little squeeze, and for that Tweek was very grateful.

“Yeah...” Tweek nodded slowly. He knew that. He knew that nobody else but him was home. “Craig, that's the part that freaked me out.” He sniffed. His throat still really hurt and he kind of wished he had a steaming mug of coffee in front of him. “I'm alone. And I _saw someone."_

Craig took a minute to reply, like he was thinking about how to. “Wul... you probably just saw a shadow, dude, there's nobody else here but you and me.”

Tweek's heart began to sink, slowly, but surely, it began to descend into his ribcage. A little bit more each time a word fell out of Craig's mouth. Down into a swallowing pit in the very deepest part of his body. “No...” He said, “You don't get it, it's- it's not- I _know_ nobody else is here,” He sat up a little more, now looking up at Craig and silently pleading for him to understand. “And I saw something, standing in the middle of your fucking room.”

“I don't follow.” Craig looked like he wanted to understand, too, but Tweek knew this shit wasn't going to fly. Not with logical, intelligent Craig, who was on a higher plane of fuckery than Tweek who saw ghosts.

Tweek tried something else. He took a breath and pinched the bridge of his nose for a second before starting again, with his eyes squeezed shut. “Craig do you ever like- do you ever hear stuff, in this house? Or see anything weird?”

“I mean, there's the neighbor guy that's pretty weird,” Craig leaned around Tweek a little to peer at one of the covered windows. He wouldn't see anything out them but it wasn't for lack of trying. “He makes noise a lot, plus I never see the guy. But, I mean, it's an old house too,” His voice was calm and level just like it always was, and Tweek felt his heart finally settle somewhere in his guts. “It's just going to make noise. It's old plumbing and shit.”

“That's not- ngh,” Tweek glanced down, his hands were shaking. “That-that's not the same thing, I'm talking about- nngh, fuck, okay, Craig, you remember last week when I burned myself?”

“Yeah.”

“I didn't spill the coffee.”

“What do you mean?”

“I didn't. Spill. The coffee. I wasn't even fucking touching it.” Tweek didn't realize that his voice was picking up speed. “I didn't even fucking touch it and it just tipped over full of coffee, _by itself, Craig_ , and the only reason I burned myself was because my dumb ass tried to catch it!”

“Woahwoahwoah, Tweek, slow down,” Craig put a hand up but Tweek kept going.

“Stuff keeps _moving_ on me dude, shit keeps falling off my bookshelf and I don't know what to do because I'm not doing it and I don't undersand what's going on and I feel like I'm losing my freaking mind-”

“Tweek!”

“God, _what?_ ”

“Get. Ahold. Of yourself. Deep breath dude. Give it to me in simple English.”

“Craig I think- I don't think we're alone here.” Tweek blurted before he could stop himself. “I think there's- there's something going on in here, in this house. Something- not right.”

“Dude have you been watching conspiracy theory videos on YouTube again?”

“NO! ...well yeah but that doesn't matter, Craig!” Tweek was gesturing now, his hands shaking too hard for him to hold still. He needed something to do with them and what better than to gesticulate in Craig's direction?

Why wasn't he fucking getting it? How could someone so smart be so stupid?

“So what like, you think the house is haunted or some shit?” Craig's incredulous tone was crushing, and Tweek felt like he was going to burst into tears again. Except this time they were going to be tears of anger.

“Craig-I-do-not-like-it-here-this-place-scares-me-and-I-want-to-go- _home!_ ”

“You can't!” Craig leaned back from him, eyes widening a bit. “I can't pay the lease myself!”

“You're not even fucking paying it, your parents are!”

Oh- oh no, oh, shit, when had this turned into an argument? Tweek's heart started to race in horrible little circles in his stomach, and he lifted both hands to his hair and dragged them slowly through. Craig was looking at him in both shock and anger now and Tweek was in too deep to stop himself now.

“You know, your name is on the lease, dumbass, you signed it and now you're legally stuck here!” Fuck Craig for having a point. That only made Tweek more mad. Fuck him and his face. “You can't move back home just because the house is old and gives you the creeps.”

“Fuck you!” Tweek cried, feeling tears overflow from his eyes (again, sigh) and he was on his feet before he knew it. “You don't get it! You don't know what these weeks have _been_ for me! Something else is HERE, Craig, something is WATCHING US!”

“Tweek-”

“It's watching us and it's- it's doing shit to me dude, I keep seeing things, it made me burn myself, it keeps fucking with the cupboards!”

“Tweek!”

“GAH, _WHAT?_ ”

“...Tweek, ghosts aren't _real-_ ”

“Get out.”

“What?”

“Get out of my fucking ROOM CRAIG JESUS CHRIST!”

And like fuck he did, flipping Tweek the bird with both hands and backing out of the room doing so, like a fucking dick. Fuck! Fuck him! And he didn't even shut the door behind him which meant that Tweek had to get up and shut it.

“You're an asshole!” He called across the hall, before yanking his door shut with a slam and locking it again. He heard _fuck you dude!_ from a room away and didn't dignify it with a response.

And then Tweek went back to his bed and cried. More. Harder. To the point where tears no longer came because there was nothing left in his head.

_Thump._

A book slipped from the shelf across the room, and landed on the rug. Tweek did not get up to put it back.

 


	10. Tuesday (Week 4)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> first of all I'm sorry I didn't update last week! in my defense, I was getting married, and forgot to mention so before the last chapter. 
> 
> whoopsy my bad!

_can we talk when you get home tonight?_

About fucking time.

Tweek only received the message on his break, but boy was he more than ready for it. No matter how hard he tried to hold a grudge Tweek ultimately sucked at it, especially when it was Craig that apologized first.

By the end of the day he'd managed to convince himself that Craig wanted to mansplain some stuff to him about how ghosts weren't real and that he thought it was probably better that they didn't live together anymore.

That was wholly unrealistic, but Tweek was still Tweek.

After getting off the bus he walked down the street towards the house. In along the gravel driveway and up to the front door, where a dark foyer greeted him along with the looming staircase leading up to their apartment. Tweek ascended them, dragging his feet. His throat felt tight.

Craig was home, so the apartment door was left unlocked. The handle clicked when Tweek twisted it and he stepped into the kitchen, the perfectly normal looking kitchen. Save for the pile of dishes in the sink and the coffee grounds on the counter that needed to be wiped up. There weren't any open cupboards and there wasn't anything having fallen over. Not a thing out of the ordinary. 

Tweek kicked out of his shoes and started unbuttoning his coveralls. He'd been sweaty at the plant and then cold on the way home so he felt unpleasantly grimy. He'd need to bathe.

He hung his uniform on the hooks near the door before he started down the hall. Craig's door was open, and, taking a deep breath, he stopped in front of it. “Um,” He began, not looking Craig in the eye. “I-I gotta take a bath and then we can talk, okay?”

“Okay.”

And that was that. Tweek grabbed some clean clothes and went to the bathroom.

He'd mastered the art of bathing in less than 5 minutes. No relaxing, no soaking, get in and out as fast as humanly possible. But not too fast or else he'd either hit his head on the ceiling or slip on the rug.

He washed as normal but didn't even let the tub fill up, instead he let it run hot water and used a big plastic cup to scoop and dump it on himself when he needed to rinse. It worked fine even if it left him more than a little cold afterwards.

This time he might have even beat three minutes. He dried himself, pulled on his pajamas, and, still toweling off his hair, shuffled back down the hall to Craig's room.

“Ggh. Okay man. What's up?” Tweek again stopped in the doorway and this time managed to look at Craig.

He was sitting on his bed with his laptop open in front of him but he closed it when Tweek addressed him. Then, he took a breath, and awkwardly scratched at his hair. “Come sit, dude. I need to apologize.”

Tweek wanted to kiss him. Ugh.

Instead he crossed the room and sat on Craig's bed with him, about a foot away, towel still around his neck. Tweek had thick hair. Took a bit to dry by itself. “I'm listening.”

“Uh...” Craig paused, now just kind of fidgeting with a ripped seam in the hem of his shirt, “I'm sorry I didn't- like listen to you, or like... I mean- what I'm trying to say is this: I should have been more receptive.” He cleared his throat. Craig Tucker, master of apologies. “I can tell you don't like it here. And I'm sorry for that too.”

Tweek looked down at his ankles, legs crossed underneath him. “You don't need to be sorry about that,” He assured him quietly. “It's not your fault. But thank you for apologizing. And I'm sorry that I said you don't pay rent. I know you're working really hard too.”

There was an awkward silence, and then a beat, and then the silence wasn't awkward anymore. Tweek looked up, and Craig was already looking at him, and there was his best friend sitting there again, like nothing had happened.

“I really don't want you to move out though dude,” Craig said almost matter-of-factly, and Tweek felt a weird thud in his chest like his heart had beat extra hard for a second there. He gingerly rubbed the area with his fingertips. “I don't want to be here by myself.”

Tweek felt the corner of his mouth twitch up into a smile. “I won't go anywhere, promise.”

“Thanks,” Craig nodded, and Tweek could tell he was smiling too. “I think, also, you should tell me next time something weird happens to you... so I can see too.”

“I'll try man but I don't know how well it'll work. It's always something really fast, you know?”

Craig looked thoughtful. Tweek watched him as he ran his knuckles against the corner of his scratchy jaw. “...You should try and take a video. Take the tape off your webcam and leave it streaming or something.”

Tweek felt his back go a little rigid. “And let the _government_ fucking watch me too? Jesus Christ man you're out of your mind! That's how they get to us, you know?!”

“Ah, right,” Craig's brow furrowed and he nodded; of course, how could he forget? “How about just like a video camera then? One of the old ones that still use tapes.”

“Where am I going to get one of those?”

“I dunno. I'll look online or something.”

“It's okay dude,” Tweek relaxed against the wall and sighed. “I don't want to film it, I just want it to _stop_. You don't need to be seeing shit too dude. I'm freaked out enough for the both of us.”

There was a long moment of silence from Craig, and Tweek watched him think. Craig was fun to watch think. He was the kind of person you could watch the wheels turn and see exactly where they go. “Do you know what I think we should do?”

“What?”

“I think we should like... have the guys over. Like see if we can't get us and Clyde and Token and Jimmy all together in one room again. Maybe even invite Stan and those guys.”

That wasn't what Tweek had been expecting him to say, but it wasn't an unpleasant turn of events. It'd been weeks since they'd seen any of their friends from high school.

Token was at a bigger university in a bigger city, and Jimmy was bopping around Colorado with his stand-up routine. Clyde, still in South Park, but at least he was working and saving money and doing something with his time. And who knew what even happened to Stan and Kyle and them. It had been a while since they'd all gotten together. Too long.

“I thought it might... I don't know. Ease the tension a little bit.”

“...that's not a bad idea Craig,” Tweek replied. Maybe having more people around would be good. Maybe somebody else would see something, and he would feel just a little bit more validated. Not just because he wanted so badly to prove to Craig that he wasn't faking it, either.

“That's what I thought...” Craig mused, scratching at his jaw. Tweek gave him the side eye. He needed a shave, the skin around his mouth and coursing up the sharp slope of his jawbone was already stained blue with growth. Tweek found himself wondering how it felt under his fingers- he didn't grow much facial hair himself, whatever there managed to be was wispy and pitiful so it was easier just not to have any. But Craig- damn. He'd rock a goatee if he wanted.

Tweek licked his lips and looked away, wondering how he could go from being so annoyed at Craig to being so thirsty for him, and then recalling that that was often how crushes worked. (Shit.)

 "When were you thinking?” He asked instead, reaching up to run both hands through his hair to see how wet it still was. “Next weekend or something?”

“Yeahhhh... that'd work. Just make sure you don't have to work, okay?”

“Ngh. Yeah.” Tweek felt his eye twitching a little bit, not for any particular reason, and he rubbed it with the back of one hand. He was content to sit there in silence for a minute before he heard Craig speak again.

“Jesus you look tired.”

“Sleep like shit.” Tweek reminded him, feeling his face warm to be acknowledged with such concern. “Gah! I need- Ambien, or some weed.”

“Oh, shit, I bet Clyde can bring some.” Craig paused. “Weed, not Ambien. You probably don't need to be on more drugs.”

Tweek thought about the cocktail of pills he took every morning, and shrugged, feeling a little self conscious smile creep onto his face. “You know I'm fucked up already dude.” The smile widened into a grin as Craig reached over and gave him a pat on the back that was altogether too hard.

“Yeah, but you're my favorite fuck up.”

Between catching his breath and hunching over under the weight of Craig's hand, Tweek felt his heart do that weird skippy thing again.

“Shut the fuck up,” He told Craig fondly, shoving off his hand. In one fluid movement he'd gotten to his feet and snatched up Craig's hat, which he was going to hold hostage until further notice. “I'm going to try and sleep. Night Craig.”

“Night Tweek. Don't let the ghosts keep you up- I'm _kidding!_ ” He insisted before Tweek had a chance to turn round and reply, “Seriously, if anything happens just yell for me.”

That made up for his little shitty comment and Tweek tucked the hat under his arm with a smile. “Thanks Craig. I'll see you tomorrow.”

 


End file.
